The station streams at www.wwno.org, and the episode will eventually be available there on-demand.

"I got a call out of the blue from David Simon," Bourdain tells Tooker. "Which pretty turned my knees immediately to jelly and caused a lot of high-pitch girly noises to come out of my head. I was very, very, very excited."

Meanwhile, lots of folks have been weighing in on season two's premiere episode.

The scene in which Delmond has to defend New Orleans and its musical tradition"induced a lot of wincing," wrote Josh Jackson, who with Patrick Jarenwattananon break down the music of each episode for NPR's jazz blog. "There's so much forced intellectual space between the words 'folk' and 'art.' At the end of the day, you don't always need a complicated analysis for something that makes you feel good.

He continues:

I've spent time in both Jazz at Lincoln Center and New Orleans. I have had moments of total euphoria attending professional gigs in New Orleans and New York hotels, backyards, dive bars, non-profit spaces, jazz clubs, concert halls, festivals and world stages. It's perfectly natural to accept or reject what musicians are creating on your own terms, but don't dismiss it by talking above your pay grade. It'll only get you in trouble.

Unsurprisingly - for both a David Simon show in general and this
show in particular - not much happens plot-wise in this premiere. It's
all about catching up with where everyone is seven months later, and
getting to know the new guys, and laying some of the groundwork for what
this year will be about. Like Robert, the novice trumpet player whose
appearance bookends the episode, the show is still warming up, still
figuring out how to make this work. But it's going to start cooking
soon, and the meantime, it's still very nice to be back in "Treme."

(H)ere’s the best and simplest thing I can say about the show: It made me learn to love jazz. An average hour of Treme features more musical sequences than a typical episode of Glee, and the show works hard to illustrate how beautiful music comes from dark, bitter emotions. When you see perpetually-harried trombonist Antoine (Wendell Pierce) lift up his instrument and start playing, it’s simultaneously an escape from drudgery and a release of all his pent-up anger and anxiety. Moments like that make this show a truly unique, genuinely fun experience. That’s why I tell people not to worry if they don’t entirely understand the plot. The music, the atmosphere, the feeling of humanity striving for greatness — That’s what Treme is all about.

The bar has personable service and a tattered brothel look with dark walls and antique chandeliers. It's also the epicenter of Mardi Gras morning, so the bar seemed like a good place to kick off season two. The crowd started off at a high volume, but was completely shushed by opening credits.

Last season in previewing HBO's "Treme," I said that in 30 years of writing about television, I had never heard music used as organically, wisely and powerfully as it was in the New Orleans-based series created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer. I also said I never expected to hear it done better on TV.

I was wrong. Sunday night's opening of Season 2 takes it to another level. And the use of music just keeps getting stronger and stronger through each of the episodes made available by HBO.

There are no easy answers in the Big Easy, but this is what Simon and Overmyer do so effectively. They build a complex, multilayered portrait of a broken city, person by person. This is what they did so memorably in "The Wire," another searing series that tended to get overlooked in the discussion of great television dramas. And this is what they're doing to the accompaniment of superbly chosen music in "Treme."

So, the second season of Treme premiered yesterday on HBO. I was watching along with many New Orleanians. Was I home for Katrina? No, I was here in Washington. Did I get down afterward? It took me a while. But I saw the footage and heard the stories, and my parents lost the home I grew up in, and everything in it. My friends lost their homes and every personal possession. I shed my share of tears. And I watch this show and the tears begin again. This series is the real thing.

The show's sense of place is extraordinary, its confident unhurriedness is admirable, and its use of music is routinely astonishing. And from scene to scene, "Treme" is novelistic in the best sense -- a long, complex, involving story that takes a while to settle into, but that you can't put down and don't want to end.

Last season's tag was "Won't Bow, Don't Know How", and this season's is "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams." That's a lot less triumphant. I look forward to seeing what dreams may come for Treme's players to wrap their troubles in. Because those troubles are still there. Most of the city is "doped to cope," gunfire rings out, and the kids speak in monosyllables when they're not acting out sarcastically. Accentuate the positive, indeed.

The Wire didn’t go out of its way to explain the culture of Baltimore—from the docks to city hall—but it gave viewers a familiar throughline in the form of season-spanning police cases. Treme’s never had that. It’s all expansiveness and texture. It’s the themes of the show, and the shared setting that serves as a stage to those themes, that makes it feel cohesive. To me, that’s enough. Add in compelling characters, an unmatched sense of place, and a broad selection of New Orleans music, and it’s more than enough.

And Matt Skakeeny, on his blog Sound of Treme, has some background on brothers Reginald "Diggy" Williams and Jaron "Bear" Williams (Jaron is the young trumpeter who appears at the beginning and end of the episode), whom he met through The Roots of Music program:

Witnessing "Diggy" and "Bear" learn how to play music has made me realize the power of music in positively shaping the lives of kids in New Orleans. Listening to them practice scales on my street, helping them figure out the melodies to brass band songs in my yard, and watching them march in Mardi Gras parades in their resplendent Roots of Music Marching Crusaders uniforms is a endless supply of pride and joy. Like many before them, they have music in their blood - Diggy's dad is the rapper Tec-9 from the 90s rap group UNLV and their uncle is trombonist 'Big' Sam Williams - and like many before them, they've had music teachers who have intervened in their lives and taught them how to be productive young men in addition to teaching music.

No surprise, but the show's second season isn't universally championed:

In one respect, "Treme" is the perfect HBO show, inasmuch as those who love it aren't likely to get that itch scratched anywhere else. Like jazz, though, that's a relatively narrow audience, one that Simon -- perhaps even more so than in "The Wire" and "Generation Kill" -- has chosen, for better and worse, to uncompromisingly serve.

“Treme” doesn’t give anyone much to do unless they’re holding a trumpet in their hands. Those performing this season include John Hiatt, Lucia Micarelli, Steve Earle and the Red Stick Ramblers. It’s wonderful HBO is willing to subsidize so many artists, but “Treme” feels more like a tax write-off than an actual series.

Below,the clip:

Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3429. Read more TV coverage at nola.com/tv. Follow him at twitter.com/davewalkertp.